Scripture Daily

Context No. 538 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 18:1-7: in context

1The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the Tent of Meeting there. The land was subdued before them. 2Seven tribes remained among the children of Israel, which had not yet divided their inheritance. 3Joshua said to the children of Israel, “How long will you neglect to go in to possess the land, which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you? 4Appoint for yourselves three men from each tribe. I will send them, and they shall arise, walk through the land, and describe it according to their inheritance; then they shall come to me. 5They shall divide it into seven portions. Judah shall live in his borders on the south, and the house of Joseph shall live in their borders on the north. 6You shall survey the land into seven parts, and bring the description here to me; and I will cast lots for you here before the LORD our God. 7However, the Levites have no portion among you; for the priesthood of the LORD is their inheritance. Gad, Reuben, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance east of the Jordan, which Moses the servant of the LORD gave them.”

Israel has entered the promised land, the major campaigns are over, and the text says plainly that the land was subdued before them. The great obstacle is gone. And yet seven of the tribes have still not gone in to take possession of their inheritance; they are lingering at the camp in Shiloh, settled into a kind of drift. So Joshua stands up and asks them a pointed question: how long will you neglect to go in and possess the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you? Notice the tense. Has given you. The land is already theirs, granted by God, subdued and waiting. The only thing lacking is that they have not gone in to actually take hold of it. They are camped on the edge of a gift they have not bothered to enter.

That is a strange and very human failure. It is not that the inheritance is being withheld or is too hard to win; it is already given. It is that a slackness, an inertia, has settled over them, and they are content to sit at the edge rather than go possess what is theirs. Joshua's rebuke is not go and earn the land, but go and take what God has already given. The gift is granted; the possessing of it still has to be done, and they have simply been neglecting to do it, letting it sit unclaimed out of nothing more than passivity.

That names something I recognize in my own life with God. There are things he has genuinely given me, promises made, grace available, a calling laid out, a freedom already purchased, and I can spend years camped at the edge of them, never quite going in to take hold, held back not by any real obstacle but by drift and inertia. Joshua's question is the one I need: how long will I neglect to go in and possess what God has already given me? What inheritance has God already granted me that I have been slack about actually entering into, and what is keeping me camped at the edge of it?

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